Song Zang felt a chill run down his back at Yin Chen’s gentle tone.
Because Yin Chen was not a very gentle person.
When it came to relationships, he was muddleheaded too, a little clumsy and a little innocent, and completely hopeless at tricks or flourishes. The more genuine Yin Chen’s feelings were, the less capable he became of saying anything sweet.
Even during their everyday flirting, Song Zang had to teach him step by step, make demands of him, and guide him along.
To be honest, Song Zang suspected Yin Chen was only good at coercive romance, and that he preferred tense, thrilling situations full of undercurrents, even the kind of intense activity where they beat each other up in bed.
Unless Song Zang cried.
But Song Zang had not even started crying this time, and Yin Chen had inexplicably turned gentle. He was even taking the initiative to praise him… It was genuinely strange.
Song Zang’s thoughts were a tangled mess, but after a moment of silence, he still put on an angry expression and made Yin Chen coax him for a long time.
He wanted kisses and hugs, wanted to touch Yin Chen’s pecs and abs, and wanted Yin Chen to personally cook dinner for him.
He had to make it himself, and it had to taste good. With perfect righteousness, Song Zang declared this was compensation for Yin Chen forcing him to eat raw meat.
Yin Chen showed not the slightest impatience. He agreed happily, rolled up his sleeves, and headed for the kitchen.
Before leaving, he even asked Song Zang for the insectoid bone wings he had brought back.
Song Zang could not figure it out. What use could bone wings possibly be when making dinner?
But he did not deliberately ask. He sprawled lazily across the sofa, content to play the weak, helpless piece of trash who could not take care of himself, admiring the outline of the man’s narrow waist drawn by the apron ties as he sank into thought.
Yin Chen had spoken vaguely, but how could Song Zang fail to understand him?
The Infinite Game was not targeting him. His role really was a genius.
The disabled Alpha role assigned to him by the system looked poor and pitiful, with no future to speak of, but in truth… he was absurdly powerful.
The current Song Zang could instantly kill anyone with mental power alone.
Yes. Instantly kill them.
Despite long-term malnutrition and a withered, exhausted mental sea, he somehow possessed enough terrifying power to blast an attack straight into the planet’s core with a single strike.
Compared with the crowd-control, area attacks of other Alphas, Song Zang was an unprecedented rarity.
His mental power was bizarre, like a sniper rifle that ignored all defenses. Its force was terrifying, and once he locked onto a target, he could launch a lethal attack from an extreme distance.
In other words, not only had the game system refrained from targeting him, it had actually arranged an absurdly promising, invincible comeback-and-face-slapping setup for him… almost as if it were trying to please him.
Why?
Had Yin Chen somehow given the system a brutal beating without Song Zang knowing?
Mm. It was not impossible.
Song Zang thought until his head hurt. His memories always seemed clear and continuous, yet at the same time there appeared to be some hazy break running through them. As for the strange attitudes Yin Chen occasionally revealed, Song Zang could not work out the cause or consequence. He was beginning to find Yin Chen hard to read, like looking at flowers through fog.
No outsider had the ability to answer his questions, and Yin Chen had no intention of explaining on his own, so all Song Zang could do was watch him, cling to him, and watch him more closely.
Then Song Zang abruptly discovered that Yin Chen was doing something… utterly deranged.
He had brought out the best military-grade grinding equipment and was pulverizing one bone wing into a fine powder. He poured it into a glass jar and set it among the spice bottles and whisks.
Egg tarts and cookies with an added “exotic flavor” were soon coated in a layer of bizarre powder and calmly slid into the spacious oven by Yin Chen. He adjusted the temperature, set the baking time, and they would be ready in twenty minutes.
Song Zang stared blankly for a moment, then slowly sat up and looked at Yin Chen in disbelief. Yin Chen, utterly composed, merely curved his lips before picking up a wok and starting to cook.
Every dish received a convenient sprinkling of bone-wing powder to “enhance the aroma and flavor.”
That huge pervert. Had Yin Chen actually gone so insane that he was openly poisoning him now…? Song Zang could not understand him. He genuinely could not.
Shaken to the core, Song Zang’s headache worsened, yet an utterly irrational sense of anticipation also surged through him. He clenched the blanket and lightly sniffed the aroma drifting from the kitchen, suddenly experiencing the illusion that he had not eaten a full meal in half a month.
An illusion. Just an illusion. He could endure it. He could resist.
Something seemed to be trying to burrow into his head, seeping thread by thread into his mental sea. Soft, damp sound waves slid across his eardrums, carrying a thirst to hunt and feed without end, the despair and frenzy of urgently needing to fill an empty belly, an agitated heartbeat… a chaotic jumble of things.
Clack!
The crisp sound of bowls and chopsticks striking together rang out. Song Zang abruptly came back to himself and met Yin Chen’s gaze.
Yin Chen’s lips were curved, and the deep amusement flowing through his phoenix eyes made him look even stranger and gentler.
Dinner was finished. Dessert was out of the oven. Yin Chen placed the dishes one by one on the temperature-controlled kitchen island, where they could remain fresh for three days without any change in texture.
“It’s not dinnertime yet. Have an egg tart first and put something in your stomach.” Yin Chen untied his apron and wiped his hands. “I have a meeting tonight. Come with me. You have the qualifications to sit in now.”
Put something in his stomach?
Yin Chen really had lost his mind. Song Zang had just finished an extravagant afternoon tea. He was not hungry at all!
No. He… he really did seem hungry.
As if possessed, Song Zang picked up a piping-hot egg tart and put it into his mouth. The crisp shell and soft, silky filling were crushed together, breaking down and mingling into a uniquely sweet and alluring texture.
It was delicious. He could not help eating another. Then, just as his hand reached toward the desserts again, Yin Chen abruptly caught his wrist and pulled it back. Yin Chen was taking care of him, patiently wiping every crumb from his fingertips.
The cold scent of disinfecting alcohol spread through the air. Song Zang, who had been immersed in the sweetness of the egg tarts, suddenly snapped back to himself once again, his stomach full of doubt.
Something was wrong. Why had he been so hungry just now?
Yet faced with Song Zang’s strange condition, Yin Chen showed no intense reaction at all, as though he had expected it from the beginning. He tilted his head and kissed Song Zang’s cheek, his voice still gentle.
“Put on your coat before we go out. I bought you one that fits. The military uniform is too thin.”
“…Okay.”
Still muddled, Song Zang let Yin Chen take his hand and lead him outside.
His slightly hurried breathing gradually settled.
He wore a soft, heavy down coat and snow boots that felt like clouds underfoot, bundled into a dazzlingly white ball of snow.
Very cute, but not remotely Alpha-like.
The atmosphere inside the camp remained tense, and every patrolling soldier wore a more solemn expression than the last. Yet when they encountered the two of them, they still could not stop the corners of their mouths from twitching as they privately mocked the sergeant major’s peculiar tastes.
Song Zang could feel the probing gazes landing on him, but he showed no displeasure. He followed Yin Chen obediently and awkwardly with his head lowered, looking almost absentminded.
Would Yin Chen hurt him?
Impossible.
Even if Yin Chen suddenly drew his blade and chopped off his head, it would definitely be for Song Zang’s own good. Song Zang did not think he was hopelessly love-brained. This was simply an indisputable fact.
Even stranger, aside from the 【Hunger】 itself, eating the finely ground bone-wing powder had not caused Song Zang any discomfort. Instead, it had actually benefited him.
Before tasting the bone wing, merely smelling that mouthwatering aroma had made his thoughts suddenly turn muddled. His already sickly mental sea had trembled, as though some foreign thing might invade it at any moment.
It was an obvious manifestation of contamination.
But after eating two egg tarts, stepping across the thin ice outdoors, and breathing the bitterly cold air… Song Zang only felt refreshed. When he carefully examined the state inside his head again, he realized things were nowhere near as serious as he had imagined.
His battered mental sea had become healthier and fuller than before, storing a large reserve of fierce, vivid mental power that he could draw on repeatedly at any time.
It was still like a bucket full of holes, but for Song Zang, this was enough. He would no longer suffer the dizziness he had experienced at the beginning of the game.
Looking at Yin Chen walking ahead and shielding him from the wind, Song Zang curved his lips too and deliberately sweetened his voice. “Yin Chen, you’re so good to me~”
“Mm?” Yin Chen looked confused.
“Baby, baby, I love you to death…” Song Zang continued practicing his coquettish voice, throwing himself into it with great emotional commitment.
Yin Chen’s steps abruptly paused. He turned around and stared at Song Zang warily, his tone instantly turning cold. “You still want to abandon me and go off somewhere to play by yourself?”
There, that sounded right. This was the Yin Chen Song Zang knew. Every trace of unease in his heart vanished, and he hurriedly suppressed the smile tugging at his lips.
“I’m praising you, and you assume I have an ulterior motive.” His face filled with hurt as he lowered his eyes aggrievedly. “Yin Chen, do you not love me anymore?”
Yin Chen froze, and most of the chill in his eyes melted away. Helplessly, he said, “That’s not it.”
“Then you’re not allowed to maliciously suspect me, and you’re not allowed to be so cold to me.”
“…When have I ever been cold to you?”
“You don’t even hold my hand when we go out. You’re obviously ashamed to be seen with me!”
Song Zang raised a hand to wipe away tears and made an unreasonable fuss with a pitiful expression, plunging Yin Chen into complete silence.
He understood now. Song Zang had simply decided he wanted to torment him, so no matter what Yin Chen said, it would be wrong.
Yin Chen genuinely could not figure out when he had somehow offended this little ancestor. All he could do was silently lace his fingers through Song Zang’s.
He wrapped Song Zang’s cold hand in his own, stuffed both of them into his coat pocket to warm it, and gave it a firm squeeze.
“Not enough. Kiss me in front of him too.”
Still dissatisfied, Song Zang pointed toward a Beta soldier standing guard two hundred meters away and glared imperiously at Yin Chen. “He definitely likes you. He’s secretly looked at us several times.”
Yin Chen genuinely was in the wrong on this one. At this point, every unattached Beta in the battalion looked at him differently.
Yin Chen dared even less to speak. He silently obeyed Song Zang’s demand and left a clearly visible kiss mark at the corner of his lips… then held Song Zang’s hand tightly and led him into headquarters’ conference room.
The signal jammer had already been activated, cutting the entire building off from the network. The atmosphere in the round-table conference room was silent and grave.
The officers sitting rigidly upright wore strange expressions. They secretly studied Song Zang from the corners of their eyes, wary and curious at once.
Ever since the testing equipment had exploded at the medical center, anyone with eyes and the slightest inclination to investigate could piece together part of the truth.
A supernova with heaven-defying mental power was about to rise from the heavily polluted gray haze of the garbage planet.
Yet nobody could have imagined that he would be dressed no differently from the young Omegas in Zone A.
His delicate, beautiful face looked even more innocent and fair against the down coat. Long raven-black lashes curled thickly over eyes shimmering with the bashfulness unique to someone deeply in love.
Lieutenant Colonel Hall could not help tapping the table to pull everyone’s attention back, then began laying out the investigation findings related to the Alpha rampage one by one.
All the Beta sex workers who had entered the military camp had already undergone expedited questioning. They worked at an illegal club and earned very little after layer upon layer of deductions, but their freedom of movement had not been strictly restricted.
Eighty percent of the Beta sex workers had no networked identification, no formal household registration, and no education. Selling sex was practically their only source of income. There was no helping it. Even when it came to scavenging garbage on the garbage planet, they could not compete with stronger Alphas.
As soon as Lieutenant Colonel Hall obtained their recorded statements, he immediately sent troops to surround the illegal club and swiftly arrested the people in charge. They even made an unexpected discovery.
The soldiers sent to search the place rescued several delicate, helpless Omegas from the basement. They were underage, unregistered, and included both boys and girls.
Fortunately, Omegas were too precious and too expensive, so for the moment, nobody had been willing to pay the price… but Beta children of the same age had not been so lucky. Cold sweat covered Lieutenant Colonel Hall’s back. If the underage Omegas had actually been abused, it would become a nationwide scandal, and he could forget about keeping his lieutenant colonel rank.
Because of the severity of the situation, camp headquarters had already contacted the superior legion. A legion starship would arrive early the next morning to transfer the victims.
There were far too many unregistered Omegas stranded in Zone C. Given the gravity of the matter, government procedures had directly stripped their legal parents of custody. The victims had to be sent to Zone A as soon as possible so they could receive deeper and more comprehensive treatment. Afterward, subsidies would need to be assigned, household registrations created, and suitable foster families found for the children.
“We also need to send someone who knows the situation well to go through the resettlement process with the legion. The zone governor will personally follow the case, so this must be handled carefully.”
Lieutenant Colonel Hall swept his gaze around the room. Nobody wanted the assignment. Whoever served as the battalion’s representative spokesperson would inevitably be hounded by superior officers and the Child Protection Alliance, stalked by the media, and questioned again and again.
If they answered even one question badly, every brother in the battalion might suffer for it.
At last, Yin Chen spoke. “I’ll go. Song Zang’s personal file needs to be revised, and we still don’t have exact data for his mental-power rank. He needs Zone A’s top equipment. I don’t trust sending him to Zone A alone.”
“No problem. Mr. Song is precisely the kind of talent who should have been registered in Zone A from the beginning. His injustice should have been redressed long ago.” Lieutenant Colonel Hall wanted merit, so naturally he looked forward to Song Zang becoming famous, but unease still lingered in his heart. “But, Sir, the mine…”
Yin Chen idly played with Song Zang’s hand and said calmly, “With Philip here, you don’t need my protection. I’ll go down into the mine tonight for an inspection and clear out any potential hazards.”
“Go into the mine after dark? Do you have a death wish?!”
A low exclamation sounded from the back row of the conference room.
Lieutenant Colonel Hall’s pupils contracted too. He forced his voice to remain steady. “Are you certain? Do you need exoskeletal assistance? The quality of the units in our inventory is average. You should prepare as thoroughly as possible.”
Neither Yin Chen nor Song Zang understood what had shocked them so badly, but one thing was obvious: entering the mine was extremely dangerous, and going down at night was something even more exceptional, practically no different from courting death.
Then they thought of the enormous numbers of cheap laborers who died in the mine every year… The truth behind those deaths was almost certainly not as simple as the accident reports claimed.
“Relax. I won’t die.”
Yin Chen lifted his eyes, exchanged an almost imperceptible glance with Philip, and answered calmly.
Lieutenant Colonel Hall noticed the glance between them and had the persistent feeling that the two knew some secret he did not.
Curiosity gnawed at him, but he pretended to remain composed and gave his approval. It was not as though refusing would help. Yin Chen outranked him in the first place.
Specialized protection agencies would handle receiving and resettling the Omega victims, so in principle, it was not their responsibility. The brief discussion therefore came to an end.
But the illegal club itself still concealed an even more serious problem.
“After Dr. Philip’s examination, we can confirm that several suspects displaying symptoms of mental-power rampage have abnormal brain waves, while their mental seas show traces and signs of intrusion. Suspected contamination…”
The instant the word “contamination” slipped from Lieutenant Colonel Hall’s mouth, it was muted. Everything he had intended to add afterward also stopped abruptly.
Nobody else noticed anything wrong. They continued listening with solemn expressions.
Song Zang immediately scratched Yin Chen’s palm. They met each other’s eyes in silence and became alert at the same time.
Lieutenant Colonel Hall, completely unaware that anything strange had happened to him, continued speaking at length.
“Dr. Philip reviewed the medical reports for those Betas. None of them have that incurable skin disease, and every latent infectious-disease screening came back clear. They’re clean…
“Look at all of you relaxing. Don’t think that means this is over! There is nothing wrong with the Betas themselves, but the group of clients they saw before coming to the camp is very wrong!”
Lieutenant Colonel Hall’s face was cold as he swept aside the 3D projection of medical reports at the center of the round table and replaced it with densely packed suspect statements.
According to the testimony of the club owner and reception staff, a strange group of clients had arrived without appointments yesterday morning.
They were not regulars. Every face was unfamiliar, their attitudes were cold and rigid, and both the scent of their pheromones and their accents were strange. They had most likely flown in from some other fringe planet.
They used refined radiant ore as their sole method of payment.
A few bolder Betas had also revealed that none of these Alphas seemed driven by lust. They showed no urgency from beginning to end, their bodies and muscles stiff and regimented, almost as though they were… living saints who had paid money specifically to come serve the Betas.
There were too many suspicious details. Taken individually, one could simply say the clients had strange personalities, but once every doubt was combined, the problem laid bare before the officers abruptly became much more serious.
The cold, hard “outsiders” were undoubtedly connected to the insectoids. Nobody could ignore the possibility that they had hired sex workers in order to carry out some ulterior scheme.
The information division tried to investigate and locate their identities but found no leads. The soldiers sent to interview nearby residents likewise came away empty-handed.
Other than the staff at the illegal club, nobody had ever witnessed the “outsiders.”
All of the “outsiders” were unregistered. They had no identity-record chips implanted beneath the skin, no electronic devices connected to the interstellar network, moved like ghosts, and possessed the counter-surveillance skills of experienced professionals.
Just as the major leads were almost completely exhausted, the next person to render meritorious service was still Dr. Philip.
He dragged the Betas back out of the detention room and, instead of relying on an AI scanning pod, personally donned rubber gloves and performed invasive physical examinations on each of them, supplementing the process with brain-wave hypnosis. The direction of the investigation suddenly became clear.
By taking the risk himself, Philip successfully extracted samples of an unfamiliar contaminating virus. They were hidden in the most concealed recesses of the Betas’ reproductive cavities and could only be transmitted through □□.
Elio’s Notes: The source displays □□ in several places in this chapter and does not supply the missing wording, so those gaps are preserved rather than guessed.
The Betas themselves were immune to the virus. The “outsiders” had used them as perfect carriers: they displayed no symptoms of their own, but the virus specifically targeted the unique physiology of Alphas, infiltrating their mental seas thread by thread and provoking them into becoming twisted, violent, and almost indistinguishable from bloodthirsty beasts.
Beta reproductive cavities were “underdeveloped.” Compared with an Omega’s, they were like malformed gestational sacs. Yet precisely because of this, Betas were very good at avoiding pregnancy and rarely encountered the risks of obstetric disease or pathogenic infection.
…Most absurd of all, not a single Alpha officer had used contraception, and □□ exchange went without saying. In truth, getting infected was rather deserved.
Lieutenant Colonel Hall was furious. If they had simply been more careful and cautious, most of the deaths and injuries inside the camp could have been avoided.
Further investigation revealed that at the same time the killings occurred inside the military camp, there had been other incidents of Alphas going berserk and murdering people across the mining planet.
The berserk Alphas all shared one characteristic: they had paid to spend the night with Betas from those same illegal clubs.
This was a carefully planned, vicious poisoning attack by the insectoids.
“What are they trying to do?”
“There’s nothing growing around here. What do we have besides the mine? They’re after the radiant iron.”
“Bullshit! The Rose Empire’s radiant iron is only mid-grade. It can’t compare with insectoid black steel. I fucking want to raid their mines instead! Why would they bother stealing our inferior resources?!” A rough, heavily bearded Alpha cut in.
“□□O! Are you descended from cockroaches or something? Why are you speaking up for those bugs?!”
Nobody agreed with anyone else. They looked ready to leap onto the round table and start fighting on the spot.
Lieutenant Colonel Hall tried to stop them with a cold expression and nearly took several punches from his own subordinates. The sealed conference room filled with a chaotic mixture of fruit and floral scents, all pheromones released as their emotions surged.
Song Zang secretly took a sniff. That fierce, heavily bearded guy… actually smelled like papaya, fresh and sweet with the faintest trace of milk.
It was so wildly out of character he could not stand it.
“Are all proper Alphas in your Rose Empire this romantic?” Song Zang leaned close to Yin Chen’s ear, breathing in the comfortable old-rose fragrance as he murmured the complaint.
“Mm? After dinner tonight, come down into the mine with me. If there is a problem, we’ll resolve it before morning.” Yin Chen squeezed his finger joints, watching the spectacle with curved lips while answering a completely different question. “We’ll leave directly for Zone A tomorrow morning. No need to delay.
“Do you still want to buy local specialties? There are lots of scarf and boot designs, and all of them would suit you. The beef and mutton here are distinctive too. They naturally carry the aroma of fruitwood charcoal, rich and dripping with fat. You’ll definitely like them. And there is dog food…”
Song Zang’s head spun from listening. At last, he gritted his teeth and cut Yin Chen off with a single sentence. “Yin Chen, you really don’t love me anymore. You don’t even listen when I talk.”
“…Little ancestor, how exactly did I offend you?”
Song Zang’s eyes reddened, his voice trembling. “You’re too gentle with me. So gentle that you seem like a perverted serial killer who’s cheating on me but can’t bear to let his prey go, mixing all kinds of strange things and the bones of your mistress into my food, then coaxing me sweetly into eating them to satisfy your twisted tastes.
“Then you put on the respectable face of a beast in human clothing, caring for me and pampering me, frightening me until I’m constantly on edge, only to turn around and accuse me of being hysterical.”
Yin Chen: …
He looked at Song Zang with an indescribable expression. Lieutenant Colonel Hall, who had been listening with his ears practically standing on end, also looked at Song Zang with an indescribable expression.
Hall closed his eyes and finally snapped. “If you two want to have a lovers’ quarrel, go outside and do it. Stop holding up official business!”
“Fine. We’ll go outside and argue.” Yin Chen calmly took Song Zang’s hand and stood. He looked at Lieutenant Colonel Hall, whose entire face screamed exhaustion, and inclined his head slightly. “Lieutenant Colonel, I’ll report your contribution upward. If fate allows, we’ll meet again.”
“…Thank you. If fate allows.”
＊
After being thrown out, the young couple obediently went home and ate a dinner full of insectoid ingredients.
They chatted, teased the dog, changed into clothes suitable for moving around, and then headed straight for the mine.
Dim lights hung outside the dark entrance. Two Beta soldiers stood guard. They had already received orders and proactively unlocked the elevator shaft that was sealed at night for Yin Chen.
Obeying orders was a soldier’s duty, but neither of them looked happy.
The glances they cast at the two were faintly like those directed at dead men, and even carried a trace of resentment.
They resented the pair’s absurd behavior because it might very well drag the guards into death with them.
Yin Chen disliked this undercurrent-laden atmosphere. He raised his gun, and a red laser dot settled between one soldier’s brows.
“What exactly happens if you go down into the mine at night?”
“R-reporting, Sir. Inside the mine there is ￥&*%…”
With a gun aimed at his head, the soldier stammered through half the sentence. Then trembling, despairing terror abruptly appeared in his eyes.
Muted again.
This time, the censorship was even more absurd and brutal than it had been in the conference room.
Without warning, the soldier’s tongue began to writhe. Like a nimble flesh-red python, it drooped past his lips and stretched longer and longer.
Exposed beneath the freezing moonlight, his tongue slowly began to melt.